The Omkareshwar Dam in India : Closing Doors on Peoples’ Future Abstract: The Omkareshwar Project is one of 30 large dams to be built in the Narmada Valley and which are being contested by one of India’s strongest grassroots movements. In Spring 2004 MIGA, the World Bank’s Investment Guarantee Agency, turned down an application for Omkareshwar because of “environmental and social concerns”. The project will displace 50,000 small farmers and flood up to 5800 hectars of one of Central India’s last intact natural forests. Construction of the dam was taken up in November 2003, in spite of the fact that no Environmental Impact Asessment and no resettlement plan has been prepared for the project. The project violates a number of national and international standards, including the so-called Equator Principles. Although it has been turned down by Deutsche Bank, several foreign banks and export credit agencies are still considering loan and insurance applications for Omkareshwar. Village Sukwa, Omkareshwar submergence area A number of European private banks and several Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) have been asked to provide support for the highly controversial Omkareshwar Dam Project in India. In November 2003, representatives of the Japan Center for Sustainable Environment and Society (JACSES) and the German environment and human rights NGO Urgewald undertook a fact-finding mission to the Omkareshwar area. The following report is based on data collected during our visit as well as discussions with the project sponsor, affected villagers and a review of all obtainable project documents. The Project and its Sponsor The Omkareshwar Project was conceived in 1965 as an irrigation and power dam to be built in the Central Indian State of Madhya Pradesh. A Detailed Project Report (DPR) was put forward in 1983, but as construction was delayed time and again, both design and budget have changed significantly over time. The € 400 million project entails the construction of a 73 meter high concrete gravity dam on the Narmada River about 1 km upstream of Mandhata Island, where the famous temple town of Omkareshwar is situated. At full reservoir level, the project will submerge 93 sq km including up to 5800 ha of forest lands and some 30 villages in the Khandwa and Dewas Districts of Madhya Pradesh.1 The dam is envisaged to provide up to 520 MW of electricity and will supposedly irrigate 147,000 hectars. At this time, however, there seem to be no plans to complete the irrigation component of the project. The hydroelectric component is scheduled to be finalized by March 2007. The main sponsor of the Omkareshwar Project is India’s National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), which was set up in 1975. While NHPC has only managed to install around 2,200 MW of hydropower over the past 29 years, it now aims to install 32,265 MW (!) over the next 13 years.2 Since early 2002, NHPC has thus been looking for domestic and foreign bank loans and bonds to finance this expansion, which includes among many other projects, Omkareshwar. Banks which are considering providing loans for NHPC’s general corporate expenses or for specific projects should take note of this agency’s controversial track record. It includes projects such as Chamera I where affected villagers were not informed of impoundment and had to suddenly flee when the reservoir began filling3, Koel Karo, which had to be shelved after 8 tribals were shot during a peaceful protest in 20014 and Indira Sagar, where local newspapers report instances of affected people being forced out of their villages at gunpoint.5 NHPC has no social policy whatsoever and its environmental policy (see Annex 1) is comprised of 3 fairly non-commital sentences. For the realization of the Omkareshwar and Indira Sagar Projects, NHPC has formed a subsidiary company, the Narmada Hydroelectric Development Corporation (NHDC), in which NHPC holds 51% and the Madhya Pradesh Government holds 49% of the shares. Overview of the Omkareshwar Project Area The Omkareshwar Project area lies along the banks of the Narmada and the Kaveri River (a tributary of Narmada). It includes rich natural forest areas along the North and South banks of the Narmada as well as agricultural lands belonging to the 30 affected villages. The soils in the project area are extremely fertile and irrigated agriculture forms the mainstay of the local economy. As Ramchandra Laad from village Goal says: „We have black cotton soils here which are almost 15 feet deep. Whatever we want, we can grow on our lands“. In the 12 villages that we visited, between 75% and 100% of the agricultural lands are irrigated, mostly through pipelines either from the Narmada or the Kaveri River. Thus, farmers from the region are able to grow 3 crops a year, including many different types of grain, vegetables, 1 Webpage of the Narmada Valley Development Authority: www.mp.nic.in/nvda/omkareshwar.htm 2 „The Financing of the Omkareshwar Dam in India“, Jan Willem van Gelder, Profundo, May 2004 3 „You be the Judge – Evidence Regarding the Performance of NHPC“, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, May 2003 4 „Killing of eight Tribal Villagers“, PUCL Bulletin, April 2001 5 Dianik Bhaskar, December 13, 2002 fruit, pulses, soy beans, ground nuts, chilis, sugar cane and cotton. In addition, villagers possess large herds of cattle, water buffalo and goats. The annual gross income per acre is around 25,000 – 30,000 Rupees and most of the villagers are landed. In the villages that we surveyed, between 70% - 98% of families have land of their own. Villagers who don’t own land are - for the most part – working as agricultural labourers. There are, however, certain economic and ethnic differences between the villages that lie along the Kaveri and those that are situated along the Narmada River. In the latter villages, tribal people (Adivasi) generally make up a higher percentage of the population, individual landholdings are smaller and the village economy shows a high dependence on forest resources. Most of these villages have cooperatives which collect tendu patta, a forest plant that is gathered for the production of bidis (a type of cigarette that is popular throughout India). Other forest-related sources of income are the collection of firewood, fodder for cattle, bamboo shoots for baskets, certain medicinal herbs which play an important role in Ayurvedic medicine and mahua, a fruit that is used for brewing liquor. Some villagers also find work as labourers with the Forest Department. Around 30% - 40 % of the population of the villages along the Narmada depend on the forests for part of their income. The fertile soils in the project area yield a rich and varied produce Resettlement and Rehabilitation: Wrong Numbers and No Plan Any serious effort to deal with the impacts of displacement and to restore peoples’ livelihoods begins with the collection of data. People who are not counted at the beginning have little chance of being rehabilitated at the end. According to the Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA), the Omkareshwar Project will affect 3024 families (around 15,120 persons from 30 villages). Our own research shows this to be a gross underestimate. The following chart gives population estimates for the 12 villages which we visited during our stay: These estimates are based on interviews with village mayors and elders, which we cross- checked by comparing them to the total number of houses in the individual villages. Name of Village Population (rounded) Ekhand 2,000 Goal 5,500 Goghalgaon 2,500 Indhawadi 2,500 Kamankheda 1,500 Karoli 1,200 Kelwa Buzurg 1,400 Paladi 1,300 Saktapur 1,350 Sukwa 1,000 Toki 1,500 Panthiaji 350 Total: 22,100 If one assumes that the remaining 18 villages are of similar size or even slightly smaller than the 12 villages in which we collected data, a reasonable estimate of the total population in the submergence villages would be at least 50,000 people.6 Village interview in Sukwa, Omkareshwar submergence area In a planning document from 1985, the Madhya Pradesh Government claims that around half of the affected villages will be only partially submerged.7 However, in each and every village that we visited, villagers had detailed and very serious complaints about the surveying process and the resulting projections. In many villages, we were told that surveyors had refused to include peoples’ houses or lands unless they were given bribes; in other places, land and houses belonging to Harijans („untouchables“) were excluded from the survey and virtually everywhere, people pointed out to us that although some high-lying areas were marked with surveyor stones, many lower-lying areas had been classified as „non-submerging“. In a typical interview, Rejaram Panch says: „ The land of our village is around 700 ha and initially we were told that the entire village is submerging. But now, they are showing only 380 ha as submerging. But even without the dam, our village is severely affected by backwaters from the Narmada during floods. When the dam is there, submergence will be much more. We are quite sure that these surveys are incorrect.“8 6 If one simply extrapolates our figures to encompass 30 villages, the estimate of the total population in the submergence area actually works out to 55,250. 7 Even if one accepts the land surveys at face value, this still means that the number of affected people has been grossly underestimated. Around 26,600 people live in the 16 villages which are listed as „full submergence villages“. The project authorities don’t give figures on how much land will be flooded in the 14 „partial submergence villages“ , but if one, for example, (optimistically) assumes that only 50% of the population in these villages will be affected, this would still raise the total number of people to be displaced by the reservoir to over 38,000.